1.8.1
on June 15, 2020
at 4:00 am
Erin’s got maps for every occasion! If only he could stop drawing plot summaries on them
Aurora
A fantasy webcomic. Updates M-W-F.
Erin’s got maps for every occasion! If only he could stop drawing plot summaries on them
Ooh, we’ve got some backstory coming up about this academy! Maybe his hubris was too much for them (foolish mortals, unable to stand my hubris!)
Also, I’d like to point out that there’s a squirrel on kendal’s arm.
Perhaps Vash was a Jr. Chipmunk? That would make Kendal well versed in all woodland creatures.
I JUST rewatched that film!
finaly! a world map! and its magnificent!
Ask and she shall deliver, apparently
A mysterious coincidence unlike any seen on earth.
that’s never gonna go away, is it
Nope!
Local floof boi randomly befriends a squirrel, more at 11
?21/10
They will end up in the academy, aren’t they XD
Yes! A world map!
You have made this map lover very happy.
Plus, please tell me this squirrel is about to become a new party member.
“I think it would be unwise to return there right now.”
WHAT DID YOU DO?!
Erin… what’d you do.
He’s sicktatts McHubris remember? Good ol’ Pompous Nitwit! I don’t think he’d clash well with a standardised education system. My guess is either homeboy took an experiment too far one time, and got struck with a final warning, or he doesn’t want Walter/VD to destroy anything important, like his relationship with higher ups.
Or he simply doesn’t want to endanger the people who live there; he seems pretty fixated on keeping the Void Dragon as dormant and nonthreatening as possible (for damn good reason)
Probably both, if his introduction in the lightning sector has anything to say about his relationship with some of the officials of the Aseran academy.
Last month or so I actually wrote a silly slice-of-life sort of fanfic that involved him waking up acquaintances at 3 am to assist in his experiments. They were not pleased. I imagine a lot of people were secretly relieved that they got to send him off into the storm and be done with him.
For some reason I have trouble imagining an Erin who acts somewhere in between nerdy cinnamon roll and inconsiderate jerk.
So.. What are the chances of a dramatic shipwreck on those islands? Or Aziraphale intercepting them? Or Sparky-Sparky-Gold-Woman catching up to them?
Pretty likely I’d say. I’d also say it’s pretty likely they’ll have to go through that desert Erin carefully plotted the route around.
Here’s a possible plot point, the lore page talks about how Vash first got his sword to fend off a storm god who had been thoroughly drenching many cities in the region, and after he successfully defeated the storm god Vash exiled him to only roam the oceans and never approach the any coast again. I’d be willing to bet that they’re going to run into that storm god as they cross that stretch of sea, because so far everything in the lore pages has had some more relevance than just a bit of backstory.
squirrel!
Good job, kid. You’ve already gone around burning bridges, haven’t you?
Wait, hold up, a few things about this map, first of all, if wind is there on the storm then it would be blowing into the mountains and not toward where I would suspect Windcrest (and subsequently Vash)would be, which would be the only settlement on the extreme left (from what we can see) of the continent and close to the woods there.
Second one of the mountain ranges that appears on the map seems to have a rather large lake on it, I’m going to guess that there is a plateau there that allows for such to happen (at least that’s the only way I can think of, I don’t really expect a depression to appear in an area surrounded by mountains). However there is another lake which exists both in the mountains and at a lower elevation past the mountains, so I’m going to guess a similar phenomenon is happening there and the two portions of the lake are connected by a pretty wicked waterfall. (actually, this seems to happen a lot throughout the map)
Third, there seems to be a big ass desert of particular interest to Erin since he’s circled it and marked down a few locations, however, since this desert nither has a mountain range blocking it from the sea or is significantly large enough to warrant its existence in the same vein as a desert-like the Sahara I’m going to guess that it was once underwater as a sea or lakebed before drying up somehow.
Fourth there seems to be a string of islands connecting two of the continents, was it that they were perhaps once a land bridge connecting the two continents?
Fifth, since it is the first thing marked down on the maps route I’m going to guess that that is were the Arssen mages academy is.
Sixth Erin called that port city Hollowsong, any relation to Hollow Knight, or Silksong?
Seventh, not complaining just saying, did Kendel and the gang travel into these woods while the magic guy from the previous page was rescuing that family because last we saw them they were in the wastes of the storm, so why didn’t they chart their route there?
1) Vash is the city outlined in purple, meaning that to get to Windscrest, Kendal and Alinua must’ve traveled north along the western shore of the lake that comes out of The Storm. Also, Vash isn’t (or rather, wasn’t) the westernmost settlement on that continent; we can see at least five more major cities to the northwest, with more obfuscated by Erin’s speech bubble, not to mention all the smaller towns that aren’t marked here.
2) The lake right in the middle of that northwestern mountain range was likely a valley at one point, before torrential rainfall flooded it over and yearly snowmelt from the mountains sustained it ever since. As for the huge lake near the monastery, that one could easily have been glacial in origin, considering the northern latitude and the possibility of past ice ages.
3) There is actually a skinny mountain range separating the desert from the coast; it’s colored in the same gray as the rest of the mountains. It’s a little hard to see if you can’t zoom in on the picture, though.
4) My guess would be that those islands sit on top of a divergent plate boundary (kinda like Iceland); but, Aurora has already been shown to be tectonically dead, so my guess is that those islands were there from the beginning.
5) Pontentially; another likely possibility is that it’s one of the cities west or northwest of Vash. I kinda hope not, though… I would really like to see it at some point.
6) It’s probably just a coincidence. (Though you have now upped my hype for Silksong)
7) They probably cut east right through the heart of The Storm, passing by the pedestal of fate, before traveling through the stone sector and arriving out the other side into the forest.
One more thing about this map: it doesn’t seem to show the whole world. The continent in the lower right has a distinct lack of icy features, and it gets cut off in a bit of an awkward spot. This means that while it looks like the crew will be travelling across the whole world Team Avatar style, they’ll probably only traverse… I’d say 5,000 – 12,000 km. (Assuming, of course, that Aurora is the same size as Earth.)
5,000 km (roughly 3,000 miles): I estimate it to be the distance from Alaska’s Bering Strait coast to Newfoundland’s Atlantic coast.
12,000 km (roughly 7,500 miles): Slightly longer than the width of Asia.
It should be possible to get a more accurate measurement. The lore page says how big the storm is. If you measure how log the storm is on the map, you’ll figure out the scale and be able to figure out exactly how big the world is. I would just do it instead of telling others how to, but I’m at work for the next 6 hours. So… have fun!
For some reason, the lore page for The Storm is inaccessible on my tablet; it redirects to the page about the three elder races instead
The storm is “roughly 100 miles across.”
I’m tired and going to go to bed now, but I have a whole day tomorrow to be a nerd. I’ll bust out a ruler and figure out the scale then.
I’m going to start a new comment thread. This one is getting a bit cluttered.
Bear in mind the storm wasn’t at all natural, that was just the sixth of the storm dominated by the wind, and as such it got a tad breezy round that part of the land.
If I understand plate tectonics right, those mountain ranges don’t make any sense, which isn’t like Red at all. I can only assume that she did it on purpose to highlight the fact that this world is made out of a dead Stone primordial, and therefore the geology doesn’t work the same way.
I imagine you won’t see this since I’m 4 years late, but what part of the map doesn’t make sense to you? I’m studying plate tectonics at university and I don’t see anything particularly wrong with it. Some highly specific formations, but no more than in the real world.
Interesting. The only other times I’ve ever read about soulshaping (Soulcasting, forging a soul, etc.) were in the works of Brandon Sanderson. I bet the monks going to be awesome.
Is the squirrel going to join the crew? Please tell me the squirrel is going to join the crew
It has, for now, thanks to Kendal’s hospitality
That squirrel is never leaving. The fanbase forbids it.
what should we even name it?
I vote ratatosk.
Sam is a nice name, maybe Sam the Squirrel. It has a nice ring to it.
YES!RATATOSK!
I also vote this.
It is confirmed now that Kendal is a Disney princess. You gave it away little squirrel.
Boat chapter! Boat! Chapter!
Kendal is now officially a Disney Princess and no one can tell me otherwise!
Last night I spend twelve dollars buying digital comic books for research just to prove a point for an argument on the internet I ended up losing.
How was y’all’s weekend?
Well, I’ve had insomnia for the past week and I realized I might also have seasonal affective disorder…
Not great. I’d wager a guess on not great.
Dude same for both *high five*
(btw try taking melatonin an hour before going to sleep, it does wonders)
I don’t want to rely on drugs to fall asleep
I can understand that. Sorry about the insomnia 🙁
I finished memorizing the passage of Purgatorio I plan to recite for Festival Dantesco.
Oh God, he really is this setting’s equivalent of The Dom’s Terrance, the Douchebag from Ravenclaw.
They’re going to run into Glowy McPaladin, aren’t they…
Oeuf… overdue books. Very dangerous situation he’s got there 😮
Dude’s just vibin’ with a squirrel.
Aright buddy, who did you piss off.
Alright! I called in my family for some assistance. Joining me in this deduction is little brother Ripple (who just learned about measuring this year in 2nd grade, so you know he’s a professional). Middle child Wave declined my offer though. He responded with something along the lines of, “why would I want to get involved in your boring nerd stuff?” (Don’t worry, I’ll convert him eventually).
With that out of the way…
on my computer, the storm is .25 inches across. According to the lore page on the storm, it is roughly 100 miles across. so we have a scale of 400 miles/ 1 inch (at least on MY screen). The map shown is 11 in. by 7 in. so the map shows an area of 12,320,000 mi^2. On Twitter, Red said that the map is, “less than a quarter of the full world map.” So the lowest estimate we have for the area of a full world map is over 49,280,000 mi^2.
Nice measuring! I love how nerdy this fandom is
I wonder how hard it would be to cross the North Pole instead.
“Hollowsong”. The game set between Hollow Knight and Silksong.
Hmm, what are you hiding Erin? Something you did before you left? Something you said? Maybe you don’t want your family to see you like this?
It’ll be nice to see them traveling together across deserts and seas, I wonder if Alinua or Kendal will get seasick.
TL;DR: The Floofcrew plans a course, go for the longer way because Hubris mcNarratorman doesn’t wanna meet his dad.
Love how Kendal is just chilling with a squirrel
alt text: see, I have all these overdue library books…
Image source: map
The plot will hence proceed out east
Couldn’t they maybe shortcut at least?
Erin: I don’t think that I should go back there right now
Alinua: why?
Erin: My dad-
Red: Daddy issuuuueeesss
Kendel was Junior Chipmunk. Squeak squeak squeak… squeaker.
Kendal is a disney prinsess